My daily readings 09/20/2009

Coined as a “Twitter for pictures,” DailyBooth is similar to the micro-messaging site in that users can choose to follow others, and it has adopted the “@” reply function. Twitter is a prime driver of traffic to DailyBooth, according to Wheatley, as users can tweet links to their photos on the DailyBooth site.

Consider the simplest algorithm. At any given moment, take a step in the direction that takes you higher. The risk with this method is if you happen to start near the lower hill, you’ll end up at the top of that lower hill, not the top of the tallest hill.

A more sophisticated version of this algorithm adds some randomness into your walk. You start out with lots of randomness and reduce the amount of randomness over time. This gives you a better chance of meandering near the bigger hill before you start your focused, non-random climb.

Another and generally better algorithm has you repeatedly drop yourself in random parts of the terrain, do simple hill climbing, and then after many such attempts step back and decide which of the hills were highest.